Mary Dreier (September 26, 1875 - August 15, 1963) was an American social reformer in New York.
Mary Dreier (September 26, 1875 - August 15, 1963) was an American social reformer in New York.
Mary Elisabeth Dreier was born in New York city, New York, on September 26, 1875. [1] Her parents, Theodor Dreier, a successful businessman, and Dorthea Dreier, were both immigrants from Germany. [2] Her mother's maiden name was Dreier and her parents were cousins from Bremen, Germany, where their ancestors were civic leaders and merchants. Theodor came to the United States in 1849 and became partner at the New York branch of the English iron firm of Naylor, Benson and Company. He married Dorthea in 1864 during a visit to Bremen and brought her back with him to the United States, and they lived in a brownstone house in Brooklyn Heights, New York. [1]
Mary had a brother and three sisters; [2] her sister Margaret was also a labor reformer, while her sisters Dorothea and Katherine were painters. [1]
Mary was educated by private tutors for the early part of her life, and later took courses at the New York School of Philanthropy. Her initial financial support came in the form of a trust fund left by her father. She and her sister Margaret worked hand-in-hand throughout her career.
She shared a home with fellow reformer and lifelong romantic partner Frances Kellor from 1905 until the latter's death in 1952. The two were part of a network of lesbian reformers. She lived alone for the rest of her life until dying of a pulmonary embolism on August 15, 1963, at her summer home in Bar Harbor, Maine. She and her partner Frances Kellor are buried together at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York. Mary Elisabeth Dreier represents the involved philanthropist of the early twentieth century. From a financially secure family, she constantly contributed time, funds, and organizing talents to a variety of feminist causes, most notably women workers and the suffrage movement. Her social prominence and social commitments led to her service on local and regional boards and commissions, particularly those dealing with labor and with penal reform.
It was her strong religious background that motivated Dreier to take up religious reform. She focused on working women, women suffrage, and social and civic improvement.
In 1899, she met Leonora O’Reilly, who was a former garment worker and head of a local settlement house at the time. Leonora was the one to connect Mary and her sister Margaret with the settlement house. They joined the New York Women's Trade Union League (NYWTUL), a coalition of female workers and middle- and upper-class women reformers founded in 1903 to organize working women and educate the public about urban labor conditions. Dreier served as president of the NYWTUL from 1906 to 1914, as acting president in 1935, and remained active until it disbanded in 1950. During a 1909 strike of shirtwaist-makers, she was arrested during a demonstration. However, after that she became a leading spokeswoman for labor reform for women workers. During her presidency, the New York group was particularly active among garment workers, supporting their organization in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and assisting them in strike activities.
From 1911 to 1915, she served on the New York State Factory Investigating Commission, which provided evidence for the passage of factory reform legislation. She also wrote articles for the WTUL’S journal, Life and Labor, to encourage unionization. In 1915, Mayor John Mitchell appointed her to the New York City Board of Education, but she resigned all posts in 1915 in order to participate completely in the final drive to achieve the vote for women.
In 1917, Dreier became chairwoman of the New York State Committee on Women in Industry of the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense. After the war she was a member of the executive committee of the New York Council for Limitation of Armaments (1921-1927) and headed the Committee for the Outlawry of War of the WTUL.
Dreier became an ardent supporter of suffrage and women's rights and chaired New York City's Woman Suffrage Party due to the negative attitude of the male trade unionists towards women workers. On the national level she often supported Progressive Party nominees, including Robert M. La Follette and Henry A. Wallace, and she later became an enthusiastic backer of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Dreier served on several government and private committees concerned with labor and women. Later in her career, she devoted more of her attention to international issues and American foreign policy. Between the world wars she supported Soviet-American friendship and was an outspoken opponent of the regime in Nazi Germany. Following World War II she opposed nuclear proliferation. In the 1950s the FBI investigated her politics.
In 1914 she wrote Barbara Richards, a novel about working women that remained unpublished. In 1950 she published a biography of her sister, Margaret Dreier Robins: Her Life, Letters and Work.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
Alice Hamilton was an American physician, research scientist, and author. She was a leading expert in the field of occupational health, laid the foundation for health and safety protections, and a pioneer in the field of industrial toxicology.
Rose Schneiderman was a Polish-born American labor organizer and feminist, and one of the most prominent female labor union leaders. As a member of the New York Women's Trade Union League, she drew attention to unsafe workplace conditions, following the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, and as a suffragist she helped to pass the New York state referendum of 1917 that gave women the right to vote. Schneiderman was also a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and served on the National Recovery Administration's Labor Advisory Board under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She is credited with coining the phrase "Bread and Roses," to indicate a worker's right to something higher than subsistence living.
The Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) (1903–1950) was a U.S. organization of both working class and more well-off women to support the efforts of women to organize labor unions and to eliminate sweatshop conditions. The WTUL played an important role in supporting the massive strikes in the first two decades of the twentieth century that established the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and in campaigning for women's suffrage among men and women workers.
Leonora O’Reilly was an American feminist, suffragist, and trade union organizer. O'Reilly was born in New York state, raised in the Lower East Side of New York City. She was born into a working-class family and left school at the age of eleven to begin working as a seamstress. Leonora O’Reilly’s parents were Irish immigrants escaping the Great Famine; her father, John, was a printer and a grocer and died while Leonora was the age of one, forcing her mother, Winifred Rooney O’Reilly, to work more hours as a garment worker in order to support Leonora and her younger brother.
Clara Lemlich Shavelson was a leader of the Uprising of 20,000, the massive strike of shirtwaist workers in New York's garment industry in 1909, where she spoke in Yiddish and called for action. Later blacklisted from the industry for her labor union work, she became a member of the Communist Party USA and a consumer activist. In her last years as a nursing home resident she helped to organize the staff.
Alice Henry was an Australian suffragist, journalist and trade unionist who also became prominent in the American trade union movement as a member of the Women's Trade Union League.
Agnes Nestor was an American labor leader, politician, and social reformer. She is best remembered for her membership and leadership roles in the International Glove Workers Union (IGWU) and the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL), where she organized for women's suffrage and workers' rights. Nestor's prominent activities included organizing women workers in Chicago in the early 1900s, running for public office, serving on national commissions to promote education, and securing work-hour limitations for women.
Katherine Sophie Dreier was an American artist, lecturer, patron of the arts, and social reformer. Dreier developed an interest in art at a young age and was afforded the opportunity of studying art in the United States and in Europe due to her parents' wealth and progressive attitudes. Her sister Dorothea, a Post-Impressionist painter traveled and studied with her in Europe. She was most influenced by modern art, particularly by her friend Marcel Duchamp, and due to her frustration with the poor reception that the works received, she became a supporter of other artists. She was co-founder of the Society of Independent Artists and the Société Anonyme, which had the first permanent collection of modern art, representing 175 artists and more than 800 works of art. The collection was donated to Yale University. Her works were exhibited in Europe and the United States, including the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art.
Frances Alice Kellor was an American social reformer and investigator, who specialized in the study of immigrants to the United States and women. She was secretary and treasurer of the New York State Immigration Commission in 1909 and chief investigator for the Bureau of Industries and Immigration of New York State in 1910–13. She also oversaw the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers.
Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, was an organizer in the early U.S. labor movement. She learned early the importance of unions from poor treatment received at her first job in dressmaking. Making a career in bookbinding, she joined the Ladies Federal Local Union Number 2703 and organized her own group from within, Woman's Bookbinding Union Number 1.
Margaret Dreier Robins was an American labor leader and philanthropist.
Mary Anderson was a Swedish-born American labor activist and an advocate for women in the workplace. A feminist, she rallied support to ratify many new laws to support women and equal rights. Throughout her lifetime, Anderson held a large range of roles, rising from a factory worker to the Director of the Women's Bureau in the United States Department of Labor. Anderson's work to protect the rights of women in the workplace made no small impact on the lives of working women across the country.
Julia Sarsfield O'Connor (1890–1972) was an American labor leader and head of the National Telephone Operators' Department of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). She spent her entire forty-five-year career in the labor movement.
Gertrude Barnum was an American social worker and labor organizer.
Frieda S. Miller was an American labor activist, government administrator and women's rights activist. She served as the Industrial Commissioner of New York from 1938 to 1942 and the director of the United States Women's Bureau from 1944 to 1953. From 1936 through the 1950s, she worked with the International Labour Organization advising on women's employment issues. In the 1960s, she served in various capacities as a delegate to the United Nations focused on issues for women and children.
Elisabeth Christman was a trade union organizer.
Women in labor unions have participated in labor organizing and activity throughout United States history. These workers have organized to address issues within the workplace, such as promoting gender equality, better working conditions, and higher wages. Women have participated in unions including the Collar Laundry Union, the WTUL, the IWW, the ILGWU, and the UAW.
The Dreier sisters were four American sisters from New York City, who separately and collectively achieved public recognition for their activism and philanthropic social reform activity.
Emma Steghagen was an American labor organizer and suffragist, based in Chicago. She was secretary and treasurer of the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) of Chicago, organized the Wage Earners Suffrage League in Chicago, and served on the American Committee on Conditions in Ireland.
Carol Hurd Green is an American scholar, author, and editor, including of women's biography collections. Green is the director of the Donovan Urban Teaching Scholars Program and faculty member in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development.
